BREAKING THE SILENCE

When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John.” —Luke 1:12, 13

There had been 400 or so years during which the Jewish people had lived with the apparent silence of God. After the voices of the Hebrew prophets fell silent, Greek and then Roman armies marched across their land, with the occasional brave but doomed revolts arising among the oppressed people. Those strident prophetic voices that promised restoration and renewal with the coming of the Messiah had receded into history, replaced by occasional rebel leaders who wanted to take on the mantle to rally the people to their cause.

But the occupying armies were cruel and unmoved—and God seemed to be silent. For Zechariah and Elizabeth, their experience of God’s silence was not as long but was no less real. We are introduced to this couple as righteous, childless, and very old (see Luke 1:6, 7). We can imagine their years of hopes and expectations, their earnest prayers and bitter disappointments. And worse than this was the social stigma that compounded their frustrations. As Elizabeth commented after hearing the news, God had now “taken away my disgrace among the people” (Luke 1:25). Yet, for all those years, God had seemed silent.

Then, the silence was broken. After so long, it was hardly surprising that Zechariah was startled. It might have been considered privilege enough to perform the priestly duty of burning incense in the temple, but then an angel appeared with a message that God had heard his prayers and the time had come for a response. Zechariah still took some convincing (see Luke 1:18–20)—but he could not deny that God had finally broken His silence.

Zechariah’s family, the nation, and the world would not be the same again.